Involving women in the community

I took my first computer science course in the fall of 2011. I sucked. During my exams, the only thought in my head was: “Well, I know some of these words.” After failing exams programming in C, I did my final project in Python using Django to make an awesome website. What a difference it made, and I finished the course with an superior marks.

Coming from a non-engineer background, with a new interest in Python, I organized a Python study series for Women Who Code, a ~1000 member meetup.com group in the Bay Area. After appealing to women how versatile Python can be with practical problem sets, our final project is to collaborate on one Django project to create a Women Who Code website. I will talk about the best way to adapt the available Django tutorials and other resources for those with little to no web development experience. I will also talk about creating a safe space for learning, different techniques I used, and how best to appeal the interests of newbies in the Python/Django community.